Drug-cost Aid May Come Too Late For Some

An Ex-orlando Couple's $500-a-month Bill For Prescriptions Led Them To Buy A Mobile Home.

November 25, 2001|By Greg Groeller, Sentinel Staff Writer

Madeline and Joseph Lange lived for 30 years in Orlando before medical costs forced them to move into a mobile home in rural Putnam County in 1994.

Before Joseph Lange's death in September, the couple spent $500 a month on prescription drugs to treat his heart condition and emphysema and her diabetes. They racked up thousands in credit-card debt because they could rarely afford all the medications.

With her husband gone, Madeline Lange's drug bill has been cut in half, but so has her income because his monthly Social Security check no longer comes. And so she continues to struggle, with no hope of moving back to Orlando to be near her children.

Lange has heard politicians talk about adding a prescription-drug benefit to Medicare -- the federal program that pays some medical costs for seniors -- but she is doubtful that there's enough federal money to pay for the drugs taken by millions of seniors nationwide.

"I'd love for it to happen, but you know it won't,'' said Lange, 79. "I would just like it if the drug companies would just drop their prices a little bit."

Pharmaceutical companies insist they need to charge hefty prices to recoup the millions they spend on research and development. And with public demand for the latest drugs soaring, experts say there is little hope that drug costs will come down any time soon.

Drug prices climbed 16 percent or higher each year from 1996 to 2000, and the double-digit increases are projected to continue through at least 2005, according to Express Scripts, a pharmacy benefits-management company.

Seniors, who typically take more prescription drugs than younger people, and the uninsured will bear the brunt of the price increases. But even those with health insurance will feel the impact as premiums rise and some employers, particularly small businesses, decide that it is too expensive to offer health benefits to their workers.

"Every consumer is paying the price,'' said Paul Ginsburg, president of the Center for Studying Health System Change, a Washington policy-research group.

The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 may have quashed the few government proposals on the table to help consumers deal with the rising costs. Before the attacks, a plan by President Bush to offer seniors discount cards that would offer savings of up to 25 percent on medications was already being attacked by critics as too little, too late. With Bush and Congress distracted by war, it is uncertain whether that plan ever will become reality.

There's even less hope for a full-fledged Medicare prescription-drug benefit that would pay a big portion of seniors' drug costs. Presidential candidates paid lip service to such a benefit last year, but Congress has deadlocked on the issue. While some proponents had hoped for a break in the stalemate, they now admit there is little hope of such a benefit being implemented this year.

So how did drug costs get so out of hand? That, of course, depends on whom you ask.

Lawmakers and consumer advocates love to point the finger at drug companies. They say corporate greed has driven costs of the most popular drugs to dizzying heights.

Drug companies counter that they must raise prices to make up for the billions they spend to develop new drugs. The average drug takes 15 years to develop and at a cost of $500 million, according to one industry trade group. Prescription drugs may be expensive, they say, but without that revenue, a host of important drugs for ailments such as high cholesterol, cancer and asthma would never have hit the market during the past decade.

Consumer advocates are skeptical.

"Drugs are priced not to recover their research and development costs, but based on what the companies think they can get,'' Ginsburg said.

Still others blame doctors for allowing themselves to be used by drug companies as marketing pawns. Drug companies aggressively court doctors, taking them and their staffs to lunch whenever they have new drugs to hawk. They shower doctors with free samples in hopes they will prescribe them for patients after the samples run out. And too often, critics say, doctors prescribe the drugs without fully understanding their possible side effects.

Whoever is to blame, most experts predict that prices will continue to rise as drug companies pump out newer and better medicines. That will make drugs even more unaffordable for people such as Madeline Lange.

"I know I'm lucky, because some people can't afford to pay for their medications at all,'' she said. "But you'd think this country could come up with a way to help its people get the drugs they need.''